


and men that love lightly may die, but we?

by quantumspork



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Genderbending, Grindeldore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:14:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2742221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumspork/pseuds/quantumspork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of 300-word drabbles for the <a href="http://fuckyeahgrindeldore.tumblr.com/post/104468756213/30-prompt-grindeldore-drabbles-challenge-post-ii">Grindeldore drabbles challenge</a>. Genderbent because someone had to do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. introduction

It starts with a summer—doesn’t it always?—, a summer that starts with a hasty funeral and the house half-charred, a funeral that starts with murmured assurances of _it must have been a stray spark from the chimney, my poor mother must have awoken too late to stop it, I’m sure you must have heard one of the goats screaming just before, not a little girl, where would you get that idea?_ , a chorus of lies that slip too easily from Alba’s lips and not at all from Abigail’s, and Alba’s eyes are not too bright as she stands in the near-empty chapel and eulogises a mother who had already been lost to her for years.

_Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,_ Matthews 6:21, chosen during a hasty flip through the old King James kept at Kendra’s bedside (it’s always the useless things that survive); Alba herself can’t quite puzzle out what her choice means. She pays it little mind as she casts the handful of dirt over the coffin, though, and stares into the sun as if it can burn the dull misery from her.

It cannot, as it happens, but when she lowers her eyes and blinks away the green-violet haze, there is a girl she’s never seen before at Bathilda Bagshot’s side, and this girl is all wrong in the cemetery, bright gold and blue, and for a second Alba forgets to play at grieving.

Bathilda introduces her on the walk home, _I do wish you two could have met at a happier time, my niece Gerlinde Grindelwald has only just arrived on holiday from Durmstrang_ , and Gerlinde’s cornflower eyes snap as she retorts _I was expelled, Auntie, kindly don’t sugarcoat it like you do your histories_ , and Alba very nearly smiles.


	2. complicated

There were always rumours floating about Hogwarts of other wizarding schools, of course, and of Durmstrang particularly among the Slytherins, spoken of with a sort of wistful fear. Alba had by second year cultivated a habit of scoffing at her classmates when they murmured reverently of the Dark secrets that school must hold— _really, you’re no better than Muggle children, telling each other tales hunched over in the dark_. But if Durmstrang is just a school then Gerlinde Grindelwald is just a girl, not a queen or a Dark Lord, just a girl with garlands of asphodel and hemlock in her hair and bloodwine dripping from her smile, a girl who blows hexes from her fingertips like dandelion fluff. And yet she’s not the one who writes of the secrets of immortality to Nicolas Flamel, not the one with perfect marks and a spotless record who chokes on the aftertaste of achievement, not the one who casts _Imperio_ on her littlest sister without fear for her magic or her soul.

There is magic, and then there is Dark magic, and there are dark days sometimes as well. This Alba knows.

They will say it was Gerlinde who first spoke to Alba of the Hallows, Gerlinde who schooled Alba in the blackest of arts, Gerlinde who caught Alba’s pure and brilliant mind in her blaze. They will not say it was Alba who first had Gerlinde against a wall, Alba who took Gerlinde’s face in her hands and knew her thoughts, Alba who first penned that ugly phrase _for the greater good_. They will not say whose hand held the wand that killed Ariana, nor will they say who was first to say she loved the other.

There is magic, and then there is Dark magic, and that is a lie.


End file.
